Today in Berlin, Germany, criminal court.
One of Berlin's best-known professional pickpockets had a three-room apartment in the trendy Friedrichshain district paid for by social welfare - and rented it out for years.
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Sedat D. from North Macedonia, 48 years old. Married, 2 wives, 5 children, lived “mainly in North Macedonia”, more than 800 miles and 5 national borders away.
The professional pickpocket is said to have accommodated fellow countrymen in the beautiful apartment. He is said not to have actually been in need, especially not in Germany: it is said that he consistently had high “income of an illegal nature”. Which, of course, he concealed.
He lived “sometimes here, sometimes there”, he says. His family circumstances are “complicated”, says his lawyer. Two of his offspring, aged 17 and 8, are rooting for their bearded dad on the spectator benches in the courtroom
Social welfaire paid 1539 euros a month. According to the indictment, the damage amounted to 71,657.60 euros, more than 77,000 USD.
The traveling professional thief has been behind bars since January 2023. After more than a year in prison, he came up with the idea that he might have something to do with drugs after all. A psychiatric expert is now to clarify whether he really has problems - and if so, how many.
Verdict handed down on April 3.
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Addendum: Because of its doctrine of “open borders”, Germany and Berlin in particular suffers from an excessive number of criminal foreigners who are more or less legally allowed to reside there.
More than 20 years ago there was already a special department of the Berlin police called “RumBa” - an abbreviation for “Romanian Bands (of criminals)”. It was spectacularly disbanded at the time when a shady Romanian claimed that it was working with the criminals. It was a lie.
The pickpocket mentioned above comes from one of the successor states of Yugoslavia, a never-ending source of creative rogues.